At long last of the Colorado Rockies have won a baseball game.
After losing nine in a row, they were holding out for a hero ’til the end of the night. And Tim Melville was quick on the fight.
Bursting onto the scene with two inspiring performance out of nowhere, Melville Mania went on hiatus in an ugly third outing for Colorado but he rebounded nicely with 5.2 innings of high-quality work in a winning effort over the San Diego Padres.
The Rockies scored three runs in the first two innings on Friday night in the city with perfect weather. They fell silent after that but thanks to Melville and the bullpen, they were able to hold on to win 3-2 anyway.
Trevor Story singled on a blooper to center and stole second to start the game. He came around on a groundball up the middle from Charlie Blackmon.
Blackmon moved all the way to third on a passed ball and a wild pitch, scoring on a grounder to third from Ryan McMahon.
It looked like the Padres were going to strike back immediately with a walk and single to lead off their half of the first. But Manny Machado flew out to medium-deep left and Raimel Tapia made a perfect throw to the plate to keep San Diego from scoring their vital fist run.
That turned out to be decisive.
Melville helped the cause in the second by following up a leadoff single by Dom Nunez with a sac bunt that put him in position to score on Story’s single through the left side.
The Padres got to Melville in the third. Greg Garcia was plunked to start the frame and a double from Nick Martini put runners from second and third. Melville struck out Machado but Eric Hosmer singled up the middle to plate a pair. Gen got Josh Naylor to fly out and stuck out Wil Myers to end the inning.
Reliever DJ Johnson found some trouble in the fifth, walking two around recording a flyout, but the mess was cleaned up by Carlos Estevez who got outs from Martini and Machado to preserve the lead.
Estevez worked a 1-2-3 eighth with a strikeout and Jairo Diaz did the same in the ninth to notch his first save of the season and the first of his MLB career.
After sitting on 59 games for 10 days, Colorado finally has won their 60th game of the season.
